The Killing Hour

I look up from my letter. It isn’t going well. I’m up to the part where Cyris had his dead fingers curled around the handle of the knife but I’m not sure whether to put that down. I don’t bother to ask Jo because she doesn’t believe I stabbed him, and looking back at it I’m starting to question it too. I didn’t want to check for a pulse because I’d seen too many horror movies and knew what would happen to me if I did.

I don’t add any atmosphere because I’m not writing them a story. The English teacher inside me says nothing of my shivering from being scared to death, because the police don’t care about character development. I remember picking up the torch and pointing it at Kathy. What was it I said? That’s right. I told her everything was going to be okay.



‘What are you talking about?’ I ask.

‘We need to make some stakes.’



In the background the TV is going. I keep glancing at it, waiting for my photograph to appear on the screen with bold words beneath it saying ‘Wanted for murder’ and ‘Do not approach’. On the table, screwed up into balls, are my first six attempts at the letter. I think I know exactly what I want to say but it’s turning out I don’t really know at all. Each rewrite makes me question more and more, makes me wonder if what I’m writing ever happened at all. I keep the newspaper on the table next to me to remind me that it did.

‘Why?’

‘Have you finished your letter?’

‘Not yet. I’m still not following you about the stakes.’

‘Finish your letter and I’ll tell you.’

‘It could take …’

‘Just wrap things up. We don’t have all day.’

I don’t mind that Jo is giving me orders because it means we’re about to do something right, and that’s going to feel good after the last few days. I spend the next ten minutes wrapping things up but don’t sign it. I tear up my other mistakes and flush them down the toilet, then fold the final copy into the envelope and attach the stamp. I grab the phone book, get the address for the police station and print it across the front. I mark it as urgent.

‘When he shows up at your house,’ Jo says, ‘we’ll be able to follow him home. That’s the plan, right?’

‘Unless you’ve changed it since we discussed it.’

‘Nothing has changed. It’s still a good plan.’

It sounds like a good idea. Almost too good, as if a part of it surely has to fail because we’re in the Real World now. Haven’t I told her this? Maybe she doesn’t get it. I run the scenario through my mind. Several faults stand out but the best we can do is narrow them down by being careful. I try to imagine the sort of place Cyris lives in and end up picturing that big old two-storey house from Hitchcock’s Psycho.

‘Okay, but something’s changed, right? You’re talking about stakes?’

‘Wooden stakes. Think about it. You said both the women …’

‘They have names, Jo. Kathy and Luciana.’

‘Of course, you’re right. I’m sorry. You said Kathy and Luciana were staked through the chest. Why? It’s a pretty unusual way to kill somebody, don’t you think? Outside of a movie.’

‘Maybe Cyris thought he was in a movie.’

‘That’s almost my point. Maybe Cyris thought they were vampires, or maybe he just wanted to stake them so people would think that he thought they were vampires. Either way he proved he was delusional. Or pretending to be delusional.’

‘It seems a bit of a stretch.’

‘That’s because you’re not thinking it through. It makes sense. He also showed that wooden stakes make for good weapons.’

‘Yeah, he sure did that. Only his were metal.’

‘Does it matter?’

In vampire mythology, perhaps. In the Real World, who the hell knows? ‘I guess not.’

‘And we have no weapons. Do you want to catch him, or just follow him home?’

‘I want to catch him,’ I say, but I’m not sure why. It should be enough to follow him home, but it isn’t. Catching him may not be enough either. I don’t share this with Jo.

‘Then we need weapons of our own.’



‘You want to take stakes with us?’ I ask.

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s crazy.’



‘Cyris didn’t think so.’

‘Yeah, well, Cyris didn’t think it was crazy using them on two innocent women.’

‘What do you suggest? That we go unarmed?’

‘No. We could take some knives,’ I say, and I think about my tyre iron. Maybe it doesn’t matter what we take.

‘Sure, but we’re playing on his terms, Charlie, and that means we have to fight the same way he fights. If he really is delusional then we have to get down and dirty and be just as delusional, and if we show up on his doorstep armed with stakes he’ll not only know we mean business, but he’ll freak out more.’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like a great plan. It really doesn’t.’

‘But it is a plan.’

‘I guess. Staking out my house with stakes. I dunno. It sounds like a bad joke.’

‘Come on, Charlie, it’s not like we believe we’re going to use them. All we have to do is be prepared in case it comes down to it. We take hammers and stakes to threaten him and we use wire to bind him. We need to go to a hardware store, Charlie, and we also need to swap cars. We can’t sit outside your house in your car. Think about it.’